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Tuesday, January 24, 2012

One of those days

Yesterday was one of them. The boys were insane. I was tired. Dishes were piled up and laundry too. There were tissues shredded on the floor. I took a headbutt to the jaw. There was screaming, crying, pushing, and shoving. And licking of the humidifier. That one totally earned a time out. I'm not kidding that it was a heck of a day.
I was really willing to admit that it was my attitude. I was tired and cranky and not giving them the attention they wanted. I was about to take a mommy time-out and sneak some chocolate cake when Littler dragged me to their bedroom. Where they had broken one of the wheels off his crib. And Bigger was in it rocking around.
It wasn't just me! It couldn't just be me! Sure my attitude wasn't helping but they really were off the walls.
So i dug through the tool bag (which is a total disaster and perhaps tonight I'll do something to sort it out.) I dug through the basket of random house stuff (drawer pulls, child safety bits and pieces, a bungee cord.) And finally found one of those blasted little wrenches that come with the build-it-yourself furniture (we should have about 6 of them, it shouldn't have been that difficult to find one.) And I dismantled Littler's crib. Single handedly. It involved some interesting uses of feet and a lot of barking to keep two very curious monkeys boys from bringing anything crashing down on their heads. But I got it apart and took it piece by piece out of their room. I didn't even forget any pieces although Bigger accused me of just that (or did he really think he was helping by "reminding" me of that ginormous piece of wood over by the window?)
And Littler's mattress moved to the floor. Now, we have been planning on getting big boys beds for the boys soon. Probably next month. But we were going to keep Littler in his crib till then and make it one transition. This should be interesting.

After this day of insanity Littler was exhausted and passed out on my lap a little after 6:30. One hassle down, at least I don't have to attempt to get him to stay in bed long enough to fall asleep. Next challenge would be when he rolls out at some point during the night. Well I nipped that in the bud too. Folded an extra blanket and laid it out along the side of the bed so he would at least roll onto a soft surface and not the cold linoleum floor. That worked too - before I went to bed he was already stretched out on the blanket on the floor. Before you judge, I did scoop him back into bed after snapping a picture.

But the very best part? He slept till 6am! I remember there was a vast improvement in Bigger's sleep when he lost the crib. So there might be hope that this was the end of the 4:30 mornings. :) And ya know, almost everything looks better after nearly 8 hours of sleep. I can't tell you the last time I had close to 8 hours of sleep. I think I can count the times on one hand since Littler was born. One was the night he was baptized, November 1, 2009. It really is that memorable for me to get that kind of sleep. (And just think, Littler is the better sleeper of the two boys!)

So even dumping bowls of cereal on ourselves and the kitchen floor, even, taking out the chocolate cake from the fridge and telling me "guess what Dad says we can have for breakfast," even stuffing tissues into the humidifier, not so bad.

How well I remember those days! My sister walked into my house one day to find the house looking like a bomb had gone off in it, my children in dirty clothes, all three of us in tears and torn-up bags of trash strewn across the living room floor (THAT was the dog's fault)! I wiped my eyes and said, "It's been a rough day," and she looked down at the corn cobs at her feet and said, "Well, yeah, corn on the floor is a dead giveaway." That is now our way of describing a hellish day, "It was a corn-on-the-floor kind of day!"